Police were last night hunting thieves who raided a top restaurant and escaped with tens of thousands of dollars worth of wine.

The thieves cleaned out the wine cellar at Tom Moore’s Tavern in Hamilton Parish sometime between Thursday night and Friday lunchtime.

Now restaurant boss Bruno Fiocca is counting the cost of the raid — which included individual bottles worth more than $5000 each.

A devastated Mr Fiocca said: “The wine cellar was completely gutted — they took everything.

“I’m trying to estimate now how many bottles have gone, but it’s close to a thousand bottles of wine.

“We’re trying to estimate the value — I don’t know the exact value at the moment. But it’s pretty high.”

The raid happened sometime between the restaurant closing on Thursday night and staff arriving to prepare for dinner reservations around Friday lunchtime.

The raiders broke down several doors in the restaurant, also raiding the bar and stealing liquor and cases of beer, before looting the wine cellar.

Mr Fiocca said it was unclear whether the thieves used a boat or a vehicle in the raid — although he said some bottles had been recovered from the water nearby.

He added: “Some bottles, not many, have been recovered from the water. We are still going into the sea to see if we can find some more.”

And he appealed for anyone offered bottles of wine for sale to contact police immediately.

Mr Fiocca said: “That’s what’s mind-boggling — it’s very unusual to take all these wines.

“I could understand it if they go and rob and look for money.”

The wine cellar at Tom Moore’s, the oldest restaurant on the Island, had been built up over decades and included rare vintage bottles of Chateau Lafite-Rothschild 1999 and Chateau Latour 1982 worth up to $5850 a bottle.

Mr Fiocca added: “Some of them were very old — more than 20 years old.

“If they try to sell one of the expensive bottles, people will notice. Anyone who is offered wine should call the police.”

And he said: “They left a couple of bottles here and there, but not many.

“They even took a trolley we use to transport the wine.

“We had some luggage in a store room in the restaurant and we think they took that to put the wine in.”

But Mr Fiocca added the restaurant would continue to operate as usual while staff count the cost of the break-in.

He said: “It’s extremely distressing — it’s an invasion. We will still carry on, but obviously we will need to buy a lot of stuff. It will take a while before we can replace everything.”

Mr Fiocca added: “I haven’t spoken to the insurance company yet — we hope we can get something, but we will see what happens. We’re still in operation — nothing has stopped and we will replace what we’ve lost as soon as we can.”

No one from the police was available for comment last night.